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The morning starts with George jumping into bed with us and grabbing my phone to check the BBC Sports website. We doze until Grace comes in about 45 minutes later, then it’s downstairs for breakfast. On the weekends, we let them have a chocolate brioche but there’s a smoothie and some bran flakes too so they’re set up for their activities. We’re lucky the kids are happy to have a good, healthy start to the day.

I coach George’s under-10s football team, so we jump in the car for a 30-minute drive together. We put on his Alex Warren playlist and I’ll bore him with some coaching chat even though he doesn’t need it. We train for an hour on Tuesdays and two hours every Saturday morning. It adds a lot of time to my week, but I don’t mind – as George gets older, it’s another way for me to have time with him. Rather than being 30 metres away in the stands watching him play, I’m there, getting to experience it with him. George plays a lot of football and I’ve seen how some coaches make it pressurised – at grassroots level, you see loads of shouting. I’m really focused on it being enjoyable because I want George to be a 40-year-old bloke still loving his football one day. I’ve always wanted to do the teaching thing and I like being around the lads, having fun and seeing them grow as a little team. I’ve always had a rule that all the kids have the same amount of game time, even when it’s lost us matches.

My wife drops Grace at dancing in the meantime and will do some errands or go to the gym. She’ll always take her for a milkshake afterwards so they get some time together and I’ll often drop George off for lunch there on our way back. I head home and get some things sorted in the house – I can’t stand it to be untidy. We work a lot from home, but it’s still hard to get enough one-on-one time with the kids in the week. I’m with George a lot for football, so I’m always conscious that on Sundays we swap – Nicola takes George to football and I have time at home with Grace.

Now the weather’s warmer, in the afternoon I’ll take the kids to the cricket club – we know families who live nearby and George might hit some balls while Grace runs around with friends. A lot of her hobbies keep her indoors, so it’s nice for her to have some time outside. I might play tennis, or we’ll have a drink with friends. We’ve never pushed the kids into sport, we just want them to enjoy what they’re doing. There’s no pressure – they’ve both dropped clubs if they’re not enjoying them. For George though, he’s not as keen on school. Sport is his life – that’s where he gets his happiness from. And for me, my job keeps me inside all week, so I like having a run around too.

There’s something great about sitting around the table and actually chatting to each other. We have a favourite restaurant we often visit on Saturday evenings. George would happily have a takeaway, but Grace loves getting all dressed up and going out. When we get home, we’ll settle down to watch Gladiators. The kids constantly ask me: “Why don’t you look like that, Dad?” My wife and I work in TV and we love watching those big family shows with the kids – that’s what we used to do growing up.

George loves to stay up to watch sport – even if it’s on late. Grace won’t stand for going to bed earlier and so on the weekends we let her stay up too. If there’s a Manchester United game in the week, we’ll sometimes sneak George back down after bedtime to catch up on it.

The kids go up to bed at 9.30pm and I’d happily go with them, but my wife’s great at saying: “No, we’re having our time now.” When the kids went to bed earlier, we’d always watch a horror film but there’s no scope for that any more. So we’ll watch an episode of something and just have some time together. We joke that the weekends are like man-marking in football, each of us with a different kid, running around the whole time.

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